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Just Chat! / Re: Why are Adam & Eve always pictured with a belly button/navel?

« on: Today at 19:45:17 »

Difference between creating your own  image (any signed painting) and creating something in your own image (a self portrait).

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Just Chat! / Re: Why are Adam & Eve always pictured with a belly button/navel?

« on: Today at 15:27:37 »

Reminiscent of a famous retort.

Pompous bore haranguing Eric Morecambe: "To succeed in show business you need three things...."

Morecambe: "If you've got three, you'd be in a circus."

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Just Chat! / Re: Why are Adam & Eve always pictured with a belly button/navel?

« on: Today at 14:25:20 »

No, but why would Adam have 'em? E/specially if he was created first? What use were they to him?

Adam was both the prototype and the customer for Eve. Always a good idea to allow for a few possible developments, and if you claim to be omniscient you can build in a bit of redundancy to save re-tooling later.  But if you really are omniscient, why bother with a prototype?

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Just Chat! / Re: Is METAPHYSICS a dirty word?

« on: Today at 14:18:30 »

According to philosophers, everything you think is a subset of philosophy. That presumption doesn't confer any value on philosophy, though.

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General Science / Re: Is science a religion.........well if not why is it defended as though it were

« on: Today at 14:12:08 »

I spent many years as a trade union rep. Never a leader, always a spokesman. I was mandated by my members to do certain things and only to work in their best interests, not mine, the union's, or the Socialist Cause, and I could be recalled and replaced at any time if I took an initiative that was not seen as representative of or beneficial to my members. "Consultation" was prior and genuine, not policy-driven evidence-making.

"Authority" is a dirty word in science. "Authoritative" may describe a good textbook, but like showbiz, it's only as good as its last gig and the ultimate authority is the next experimental result. (One should also beware of "consensus" - it's no substitute for the truth!)

Representatives should be authoritative. That is, they should be well briefed on the facts of the matter and the wishes of those they represent. They should also be eloquent and persuasive, but their job is to persuade everyone else to act in their constituents' interest, not to presume the authority to persuade their constituents that the Party, church, or whatever, is right. 

And it's important to distinguish between representing your constituents (literally, re-presenting an argument to a different audience) and being representative of your constituents (i.e. an average bloke). Sadly, there is increasing emphasis on the latter, so politics is increasingly a matter of anointed leaders and complicit followers rather than constituency representatives controlling the executive.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is METAPHYSICS a dirty word?

« on: Yesterday at 22:48:54 »

Metaphysics is meaningless nonsense. Meta-analysis is a posh name for confirmation bias.

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Just Chat! / Re: Why do we have world problems?

« on: Yesterday at 22:46:11 »

Every living thing poisons its environment. Most species have evolved a symbiotic relationship with something else so there's an ecological cycle that maintains reasonable longterm equilibrium until the climate changes or the world is hit by a meteorite. Humans are currently outbreeding their symbionts, poisoning their environment faster than it can recover, and establishing territorial stasis so they can't migrate while recovery takes place, or resile against small changes in climate. We are victims of our own success.

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Just Chat! / Re: Why are Adam & Eve always pictured with a belly button/navel?

« on: 17/09/2021 22:27:17 »

they were made in the image of God,

Is that the god with a penis or the god with a vagina? The nether region of the Judaeo-Christian god is usually wrapped in a toga but He/She has both long, flowing hair and a hefty beard. AFAIK lobsters and squid were created by Kali and Ganesh did a good job too.

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General Science / Re: Is science a religion.........well if not why is it defended as though it were

« on: 17/09/2021 22:11:41 »

Can't a Quantum Physics professor Not visit a church n pray n ask for blessings n wish for world peace?

To do so would violate his fundamental religious belief that his god created the world and all within it.

I don't make things that don't work, and I'm only a human tinkerer with limited skills, knowledge and resources. An omniscient, omnipotent being that can create anything out of nothing, surely wouldn't create a world that was not to his liking?

Every prayer for healing, peace, or indeed any change in the status quo, is telling said Being that he has screwed up and is not fit to be worshipped.  Prayer is the denial of faith.

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Just Chat! / Re: Not so good YT videos.

« on: 16/09/2021 16:20:04 »

And where does the gravitational field come from when a single photon produces a positronium pair?

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Just Chat! / Re: Would the world be better if we were all vegetarians?

« on: 16/09/2021 09:13:31 »

Watch out for a new movie "Eating ourselves to extinction" released this week in cinemas. My original article in Physics World (July 2005) set out the calculations.

Incidentally the annual quiescent CO2 emission of a horse is about the same as a small car travelling 8000 miles. Animals are not green!

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That CAN'T be true! / Re: Are Flat Earthers really for real?

« on: 16/09/2021 09:03:05 »

Not a problem. There is a standard intercept procedure set down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. If intercepted, I'll happily agree that we are close to the edge, and we'll be able to see the wall that keeps the water in.

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That CAN'T be true! / Re: Are Flat Earthers really for real?

« on: 15/09/2021 17:35:51 »

Does anyone know a flat earther who would like a flight to the edge? Happy to share costs. Eastward from the UK is preferable for me - saves renting a life raft.

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Technology / Re: EoN a con?

« on: 08/09/2021 09:43:42 »

Electricity is not essential. Food is. 90% of the UK is farmed for food, and it's not quite enough to sustain the human population.

The choice is obvious: reduce the population to a level that can travel around on solar electricity and eat insects. That's good for the economy.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Lagrangian Mechanics - Why is Nature lazy?

« on: 02/09/2021 23:11:48 »

From any state B a system could evolve into two states A or C where B→A requires the input of energy or results in a decrease of entropy, and B→C is the opposite. A either presumes the existence of an external agent  (so B was not a complete description of the system) or that evolution will lead to a less probable state of the system, which is clearly less likely than C.

We have discussed elsewhere that energy is simply "that which is conserved"  so in a fully described (i.e. closed) system, ΔK = -ΔV by definition, so the most probable path is B→C with ΔS > 0.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is it wise to call androids slaves/robots!?

« on: 01/09/2021 11:01:51 »

The essence of slavery is ownership. If you own a machine or animal of any kind, it is a slave. You have the absolute right to exchange it for goods or money or to dispose of it whenever you wish, for any reason. The only  limitation in most jurisdictions is that animals must be cared for or humanely killed, but however pointless it may be, starving or beating your own machine is not an offence.

Not a good idea to ponder too much on the origins of English words. "Jungle", for instance, derives from the Hindi for "desert". 

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Just Chat! / Re: Is it possible to have a short discussion of history on a sciene forum ?

« on: 01/09/2021 00:14:18 »

But how did they cope with the fact that it wasn't actually on/over the Cg?lift?

The CG is generally close to the CL  to minimise elevator drag but it obviously moves around as you burn fuel or expend munitions, so you are frequently adjusting the trim tab en route to or from combat. Cruise trim was less critical in the Mustang which had most of the fuel in the wings ( so you have to switch tanks from time to time in cruise to keep the wings level) , and flying the Concorde involved a lot of pumping fuel between tanks to maintain trim,

The center of lift is actually the sum of all the lift vectors, so as long as the wing configuration is fixed, so is the CL. Variable sweep wings present another problem but the behavior is very similar to deploying flaps on a fixed wing: in landing configuration the CL/CG moment changes so you (or the computer) re-trim to bring the nose down.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is it possible to have a short discussion of history on a sciene forum ?

« on: 31/08/2021 23:55:37 »

Why did the Soviet Il/yushin-2 Sturmovik have an external/underslung oil cooler/radiator?
Where it could be shot up, from behind, anyway, and U couldn't have a hardpoint.
Was it to take advuntage of the "Meredith effect" or was it a poor man's cabin heater?
And what about the P-51 Mustang and Hurricane, then?

Pretty well the only bulletproof part of a fighter was the secondary windscreen. Spitfires had one or two external radiators under the wings: much the same total area as they used the same engine, but differently configured because the undercarriage folded in the opposite sense.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is it possible to have a short discussion of history on a sciene forum ?

« on: 31/08/2021 23:34:38 »

What was with the mo/ustache?

Absolutely vital piece of kit, my dear chap. Along with the girlfriend's knickers in one pocket, slightly grubby wings on the chest, and a battered cap with Brylcreem stains. Can't go around looking like a novice!

It's sobering to note that the Old Man in a bomber crew was probably no more than 25 and half the fighter pilots were in their teens.

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Just Chat! / Re: ufo's/uap's tell us your story

« on: 31/08/2021 05:03:00 »

What intrigues me is that so many photographed  UFOs follow variants of the same design pattern - the top cover of  a  globe light fitting. And just like terrestrial light aircraft, the design has evolved slightly over the last 50 years, from pierced metal (which we earthlings used to ventilate incandescent lights) to solid plastic (as shown in the OP, which is OK for domestic LEDs).

So no worries about contact with vastly superior technology. The little green men have bathrooms just like ours.